by Bill Crider
Or not. Maybe they were just having fun, but Rhodes didn’t think so. He turned around again and started to run. The dogs were well into the woods when Rhodes got there, but he could hear them barking. They didn’t seem to be moving, so he thought he could catch up to them.
When he did, he found them standing on the bank of Crockett’s Creek, still barking, although there was nothing to bark at except for the trees along the bank, a stump sticking up out of the dark water, and a turtle sunning himself on the stump. A smell of mud and dampness came up from the creek.
Considering the rain they’d had earlier in the year, the creek was flowing up near the top of the bank. It hadn’t been that full for a long time, and it was good to see it that way. Rhodes watched the turtle. He liked turtles and tortoises. The turtle was still as a stone for a minute. Then it slipped off the stump into the water with no sound at all and hardly a ripple. The dogs continued to bark.
“What’s the problem?” Rhodes asked the dogs, who, while they didn’t have an answer for him, at least stopped barking. They turned and gave him quizzical looks, as if he might tell them what or whom they’d been chasing because it had slipped their minds.
“I don’t know who it was,” Rhodes said, but he thought he knew what had stopped them in their pursuit. Whoever they’d been chasing had gone into the water, and they’d lost the scent.
“You two go on back home,” Rhodes said. “I’ll look around and see if I can figure out what’s going on here.”
That comment got pretty much the reaction Rhodes had expected. Gus-Gus and Jackie looked at him, panting a little, their tongues lolled out. They didn’t make any move toward going home. Rhodes wondered if he could stare them down and intimidate them into bending to his will. He didn’t think it was likely.
“All right,” he said. “I’m going to take a look around. You can come with me.”
He looked along the edge of the creek bank, and a little farther along he saw deep impressions in the mud leading to the water. He didn’t want to get into the water himself to see if the person of interest to the dogs had come out on the other side, if he’d even crossed. The tracks could be a trick.
The creek was about twenty yards wide from bank to bank, so he couldn’t jump it. Even if it had been twenty feet, he couldn’t have jumped it. Twenty inches maybe would’ve been possible. As it was, Rhodes would have to look for a place to cross or forget it and hope the person had come back out on this side, or stayed on it.
Rhodes walked along, with the dogs trotting behind him, to the side of him, and occasionally out in front of him, snuffling and sniffing at every tree and mound of dirt. Soon Rhodes came to a place he recognized. It didn’t have an official name, but when he’d been a kid everyone had called it the Deep Hole. It wasn’t really very deep, but it was deeper than the rest of the creek, and it had been a good place to fish. Rhodes remembered that once when he was four or five, not long before the family had moved to town, his father and several other men had decided to seine the hole.
Rhodes hadn’t been allowed in the water, but he’d been allowed to stand on the bank and watch. The men came up with some fine big bass and catfish in the seine, and there had been a fish fry that night for everybody within a radius of several miles. The men put mealed filets of fish into wire-mesh baskets, tossed in some hush puppies, and lowered the baskets into big black pots of boiling oil. They brought the filets and hush puppies out hot and crisp, and Rhodes could still remember the taste. He’d never eaten any better fish than that, or better hush puppies, either.
But what he remembered even more than the food was that one of the fish in the seine had been a grinnell, a long, odd-looking fish, almost prehistoric in appearance. Rhodes had never seen one before, and he’d never seen one since, but he sure remembered that one. The men tossed it back into the water. They said it wasn’t an “eating fish.”
Rhodes remembered something else, too, a water moccasin. Rhodes didn’t like snakes any more than Indiana Jones did, and he especially didn’t like water moccasins. He didn’t like their thick black bodies, their flat, triangular heads, or the whiteness inside their mouths. This particular snake had become tangled in the seine, and nobody wanted to touch it to get it out. Rhodes didn’t blame them, then or now.
Finally, after some discussion, Rhodes’s father had said he’d take care of it, and he’d calmly grasped it behind the head and patiently unraveled it. When it was free of the seine, he’d grabbed its thrashing tail and swung it around his head like a bullwhip before giving it a final pop that separated its head from its body and sent the head flying toward a couple of the men, who scrambled and yelled and splashed to get out of the way. One of them fell face first into the creek, which gave everyone a good laugh. Rhodes still considered it one of the most amazing things he’d ever seen anyone do.
Gus-Gus and Jackie barked and brought Rhodes back to the present. He was reminiscing a lot more than usual lately and wondered whether it was the surroundings he found himself in or if he was getting old. He looked around for the dogs and found that they’d run ahead of him and were eating something they’d found at the base of a tree. It might have been better not to wonder what it was, but Rhodes was curious. However, by the time he got to the dogs, they’d consumed whatever it was and hadn’t left a trace that he could see.
For all he knew they might have found the remains of a dead squirrel or just some interesting dirt. You never could tell with dogs.
Rhodes looked around. A dead tree had fallen over across the creek, and while it would’ve been tricky for someone to walk across the creek on the trunk and onto the bank by hanging onto the dead branches, it would have been possible. It might even have been simple for someone with good coordination and balance. Rhodes wouldn’t have wanted to try it himself, but he thought he could do it if he had to. Rhodes didn’t see any tracks anywhere around, but that didn’t mean a thing.
Rhodes called the dogs over. They no longer seemed interested in tracking anybody, and although they sniffed around the uprooted tree for a few seconds, they didn’t strike a scent. Or if they did, they didn’t care.
A squirrel chittered up in a tree, and some leaves drifted down, turning slowly as they fell. This distracted the dogs. They ran over to bark at the leaves and the squirrel, and Rhodes looked around for signs that someone had walked around the uprooted tree. Maybe if he’d been Kit Carson or Daniel Boone, he could have spotted something significant, a broken twig or a crushed leaf, but he wasn’t a frontiersman or a tracker, and he didn’t find a thing.
He walked along the bank staring at the ground. The dogs gave up on the squirrel and ranged well ahead of him, not caring where they went. Rhodes kept hoping that he’d find a sign of some kind. A considerate person would have left a clue or two, he thought, but the people Rhodes dealt with were rarely considerate. He was about to give up and turn back on his search when the dogs began to bark. He saw them turn away from the creek and run through the trees, so he followed them.
He walked up a slight incline, and before he reached the top he saw the back of a house among the trees. Behind the house and a little to the left of it was a big barn that looked newer than the house.
The dogs ran ahead of Rhodes and around to the front of the house. They didn’t bark. Rhodes watched them disappear, then stopped and thought about where he was. The house must belong to Gene Gunnison, and Rhodes wondered if Gunnison had been the one who’d run away from the Hunt place. He figured he might as well see if Gunnison was home and ask him.
When he got to the back of the house, Rhodes gave it a quick inspection. It sat up on concrete blocks and hadn’t been painted in years, but it looked solid. The grass and weeds could have used a good trim, but the tin roof had only a few rust spots and probably didn’t leak.
Rhodes walked on around to the front of the house, intending to knock on the door, but he saw that he wouldn’t need to. Someone, undoubtedly Gene Gunnison, sat on the front porch in an old wooden rocking chair. He w
as a big man, and he filled the chair with no room left over. His thick gray hair hung over his ears and down his neck. Rhodes suspected there wasn’t a thin spot in back.
Gunnison’s left foot was encased in a black fabric walking boot and rested on a overturned galvanized bucket. A black-lacquered walking cane hung from one arm of his chair. Gus-Gus and Jackie stood in front of the porch looking at him.
Rhodes remembered that like Billy Bacon, Gunnison had once played football for the Clearview Catamounts. In fact, he’d played about the same time Billy had, but Gunnison had been a lineman, offense or defense, Rhodes couldn’t remember which. Maybe he’d played both ways. High schoolers still did that in those days.
“I know these dogs,” Gunnison said in a bass rumble when Rhodes approached the porch. “They ain’t yours.”
“That’s right,” Rhodes said. “They belong to the Hunts. I’m looking after them today.”
“You’re a long way from the Hunts’ place.”
“Getting some exercise. You must be Gene Gunnison.”
“That’s me, all right. Who the hell are you?”
Rhodes touched the badge on its belt holder. “Sheriff Dan Rhodes.”
“Huh. What’re you sneaking around my property for, then, lawman?”
“I wouldn’t say I was sneaking. These dogs chased somebody away from the Hunt place, and I followed them to see if I could find out who it was. This is where we wound up.”
“Wasn’t me they were chasing.” Gunnison took the cane from the chair arm and gave the walking boot a light tap on the toe. “I got a pretty bad ankle sprain. Can’t get around very well.”
“I can see that. What happened?”
“Stepped in a hole. You gotta watch where you’re going around here, and I didn’t. Got distracted.”
“Anybody else been around here today?”
“Not a soul. People don’t come around here much. I ain’t exactly what you’d call neighborly. What’s Hunt done that he’s got you looking after his dogs for him?”
“He’s dead,” Rhodes said.
“Dead?” Gunnison didn’t sound surprised or regretful, just curious. “How’d that happen?”
“Somebody killed him.”
Gunnison hung the cane back on the arm of the chair. “Too bad.”
“I heard you and Hunt didn’t get along,” Rhodes said.
“We had a little bit of a disagreement once upon a time,” Gunnison said. “Stuff happens. Don’t mean I killed him.”
“What did you fall out about?”
“I think that’s my business, mine and Hunt’s, and since he ain’t going to be talking about it, neither am I. Wouldn’t do any good now, and I don’t like to speak bad of a dead man. I hope you ain’t accusing me of killing him.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. We’re just talking.”
Gunnison snorted. “Ha. Just talking. That’s a good one. A lawman doesn’t ever just talk, and like I said, I’m not very neighborly. I don’t have a lot of little talks with anybody. I didn’t kill anybody, either. I’m laid up with this bum foot, so I ain’t been away from the house for a while. I’m not up to walking very far, much less killing anybody.”
“You know Billy Bacon?” Rhodes asked.
“Sure. Used to play football on the Catamounts, same as me, and has a place down here. I can’t say as he drops around for little talks like you do, though.”
“He’s had some things stolen,” Rhodes said. “So has Hunt. Lots of other people, too. Anything turned up missing around here?”
“Nothing missing that I know of. I don’t have anything worth taking. You think I’ve been stealing from Bacon and Hunt?”
“Somebody has.”
“Not me. Don’t know a thing about it. Don’t care. No skin off my butt if somebody’s taking their stuff. I’ll take care of mine, and they can take care of theirs. I mind my own business.”
Gus-Gus and Jackie walked over to Gunnison’s dirt driveway and sniffed around at the back of his pickup. One of them started to bark. There was a jon boat in the pickup bed.
“Some nasty oil spots around that truck,” Gunnison said. “Those dogs get that oil on ’em, it’ll be hard to clean it off.”
Rhodes wasn’t too worried about the dogs getting oil on them. They were jumping around the pickup and might scratch it, but Rhodes wasn’t worried about that, either.
“I notice you don’t have a dog,” he said.
“Don’t need one,” Gunnison said. “I’m not worried about anybody sneaking up on me, and like I said, I don’t have anything worth taking. You better watch those dogs of Hunt’s, though.”
“They won’t get any oil on them,” Rhodes said. “I’ll take them back home now.”
“Best way to go is just follow my driveway to the road. Shorter that way, and you won’t have to go through any trees.”
“Thanks,” Rhodes said.
He walked over to the driveway and told the dogs to come along. They barked a bit more and ignored him.
“You like to fish?” Rhodes asked Gunnison, indicating the jon boat.
“Now and then when I have the time. There’s good fish in the creek sometimes when it’s high like it is now. You?”
“When I have the time,” Rhodes said. He called the dogs, and this time they paid attention, running to him and following him down the long, sandy driveway through the trees to the road.
Chapter 10
The road, such as it was, was even sandier than the driveway. The bar ditches were lined with weeds and vines, so there was nothing for Rhodes to do but walk in the sandy ruts. Sand got in his shoes and covered the bottoms of his pants. The sun was warming things up, and Rhodes hoped the top of his head wouldn’t blister at the thin spot.
Gus-Gus and Jackie didn’t mind the sun or the sand, nor did they stay in the ruts. They romped along the road and through the ditches, and when they scared up an armadillo, they took off across a pasture in full cry. Armadillos were surprisingly fast, and Rhodes didn’t think they could catch it unless it got tired and stopped running before they gave up. Even if they caught it, they couldn’t do much with it if it balled up and presented its armor to them. He just hoped they’d come back to the road after they’d had their fun.
No cars came from either direction as Rhodes trudged along the road, and he was glad of that. A car or truck would have stirred up the sand, and it would have blown all over Rhodes. He was dusty enough as it was.
He wondered about Gunnison. No watchdog, no worries about being burglarized. It seemed odd, but then people who lived alone in the country were sometimes odd. So were people who lived in town and didn’t live alone. Everybody was a little eccentric. It didn’t have to mean anything.
After a few minutes Gus-Gus and Jackie came running back. They didn’t appear to be a bit tired from their armadillo chase, and they kept right on with their explorations of the ruts and the ditches.
In a few more minutes they came in sight of the Hunts’ house. Rhodes felt as if he’d wasted a lot of the morning already, but he still wanted to take a look around the house and barn. If he found something that had been taken from Billy Bacon’s barn, then he’d at least feel that he’d accomplished something. If he didn’t find anything, that would be useful information, too.
Rhodes saw a pickup parked in front of the house, which was turning into quite a popular spot for visitors that morning. When Rhodes got to the house, Will Smalls, Joyce’s brother-in-law, came out the front door and stood on the porch.
“I saw the county Tahoe, Sheriff,” Will said. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”
True to his family name, Will wasn’t a large man. He was a good five or six inches shorter than Rhodes, although the sweat-stained straw hat he wore just about made up the difference. He had on a pair of little rimless glasses that hid his eyes under the brim of the hat. At his hip he wore a pistol in a black leather holster.
Rhodes didn’t know what every lawman in the state thought abou
t the new open-carry law, but those he did know weren’t in favor of it. There had been only one incident in Blacklin County so far, when a man thought that he was being carjacked in the Walmart parking lot by another man who’d simply gotten mixed up about which black Ford pickup was his. Both men had fired shots, but neither had hit his target or anyone else, although a Buick got its back window blown out before the two men had settled down and figured things out with the help of Ruth Grady, who’d arrived on the scene in time to prevent any further damage.
“I’ve been for a little walk,” Rhodes said. He didn’t want to mention the prowler, at least not yet. “Giving Gus-Gus and Jackie some exercise.”
“I’d think they get plenty of that by themselves.”
As if to show he was right about that, Gus-Gus and Jackie sat down and started scratching behind their ears with their back legs.
“They might get plenty of exercise scratching for fleas,” Rhodes said. “Anything’s possible. But they’ve been cooped up in the barn all night. They needed an outing. So here we are.”
“Well, I’ll take over for you now,” Will said, coming off the porch. “Joyce told me you were going to feed the boys here, and she felt like she was imposing on you. She asked me to come do it, so here I am.”
“They’re all yours,” Rhodes said. “The food bag’s out by the barn.”
“I saw it when I was looking for you. I’ll feed them, and you can go on back to town.”
“I’m going to have a look around first,” Rhodes said.
“Well, now, about that,” Will said.
He took off his glasses and examined the lenses as if there might be dirt on them. He pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped the lenses, returned the handkerchief to his pocket, and put the glasses back on. Rhodes hadn’t known anybody carried a handkerchief anymore.
“Where was I?” Will asked.
“I said I was going to have a look around. You said, ‘About that.’”
